Page 4 of Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky mountains : a study in anthropogeography / by Ellen Churchill Semple.

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The Anglo-Saxons of the Kentucky Mountains
Appalachians, cuts westward by flaring water-gaps through chain
after chain and opens a highway from the interior of the system to
the plains of the Mississippi. The Kentucky streams are navigable
only to the margin of the plateau, and therefore leave this great area
without natural means of communication with the outside world to
the west, while to the east the mountain wall has acted as an effective
barrier to communication with the Atlantic seaboard. Consequently,
all commerce has been kept at arms' length, and the lack of a market
has occasioned the poverty of the people,')which, in turn, has pro-
hibited the construction of highroads over the mountains of the
Cumberland Plateau.
It is what the mountaineers themselves call a. rough country. The
steep hills rise from 700 to 1200 feet above their valleys. The valleys
are nothing more than gorges. Level land there is none, and roads
there are almost none. Valley and road and mountain stream coin-
cide. In the summer the dry or half-dry beds of the streams serve
as highways; and in the winter, when the torrents are pouring a full
tide down the hollows, foot trails cut through the dense forest that
mantles the slopes are the only means of communication. Then inter-
course is practically cut off. Even in the best season transportation
is in the main limited to what a horse can carry on its back beside its
rider. In a trip of 350 miles through the mountains, we met only
one wheel vehicle and a few trucks for hauling railroad ties, which
m ere being gotten out of the forests. Our own camp waggons,
though carrying only light loads, had to double their teams in climb-
ing the ridges. All that had been done in most cases to make a road
over a mountain was to clear an avenue through the dense growth of
timber, so that it proved, as a rule, to be j ust short of impassable.
For this reason the public of the mountains prefer to keep to the
valleys with their streams, to which they have given many expressive
and picturesque names, while the knobs and mountains are rarely
honored with a name. We have Cutshin Creek, Hell-fer-Sartain,
Bullskin Creek, Poor Fork, Stinking, Greasy, and Quicksand Creek.
One trail leads from the waters of Kingdom-Come down Lost Creek
and Troublesome, across the Upper Devil and Lower Devil to Hell
Creek. Facilis descensus Averno, only no progress is easy in these
mountains. The creek, therefore, points the highway, and is used
to designate geographical locations. When we would inquire our
way to a certain point, the answer was, "Go ahead to the fork of the
creek, and turn up the left branch," not the fork of the road and the
path to the left. A woman at whose cabin we lunched one day said,
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